Preserve bold and italic text when importing to Affinity Publisher

[@davidadeeb]

Very helpful. Thank you!

[@britt70712]

I know it has been quite some time since you posted this video, but do you know how to do this on ipad? I tried this method and I’m not sure if the regular expression wasn’t working correctly or I had something selected I shouldn’t have, but I cannot get it to assign the emphasis character style on the words. Any help is appreciated!

[@brettlaniosh6262]

My workaround to preserve bold and italics when importing text from MS Word is to choose "Apply body text to paragraphs and preserve character formatting" Caveat - This method will retain the font size (as well as spelling language and character fill) from the original so either change it in Word before copy or do it in APub once pasted.

[@BryceBeattie]

When I'm doing a layout, it's coming from .doc files from a bunch of different authors, none of which are using the same formatting. It feels like it'd be more work to change all of the parent files, or to change them all individually once imported. If I just had one long block to import, your way would be much faster.

[@christophermckeon9030]

I find that none of these options in the video or the comments work if you have a text frame in a master page, and then you paste text into any regular (non-master) page the master page is assigned to. The find function DOES find the selected search in this context, BUT it won't highlight the word thus won't do a replace function on it. It only finds+selects a search string in text that's in a text frame on a regular page. So, dang. However, if I manually select the word and apply the character style, then it preserves the formatting when I set the paragraph style. Anybody have any ideas how to do a search-replace on text that's on pasted into a regular page that's using a text frame residing on a master page?

[@LupintheThird]

I found a workaround. In 1.10 at least (I don't have Affinity 2), you can place the cursor in your Master-derived text box, then use File -> Place (Win: Ctrl+Shift+M) and then select an .RTF or Word .DOCX file as your text input. It retains the basic font and formatting data in the source file, including colors and any tables (at least, from .DOCX the tables are intact), either for better or for worse. (The online help page also claims you can drag-and-drop such a file into a text box, but I couldn't get that to work in 1.10.)

[@nenoljubic]

Hi, need help :). I tried this, but something is wrong. I followed your instruction, but after i click "find", it only lists the lines with italic text bellow, but it does not select italic text in the actual text of the book. So there is nothing to replace. I am stuck with this formatting thing, it makes me crazy :)

[@andreasjansson5802]

Same here.

[@andreasjansson5802]

Now I got it to work. I had to uncheck Regular expression (select Normal instead), and erase the Find expression altogether (just leave the "Italic: On" selection). Also erase the $1 from "Replace with". So with empty Find and replace, the search for italic and replace with my Character style works fine!

[@nenoljubic]

@@andreasjansson5802 Thank you for reminding me of this :). I resolved this by "applying to paragraphs and preserving local formatting". But, first I format the text in Word and then paste it as it is. Afterwards, I just select the wanted paragraph and apply the particular text style with this rule and things end up OK :)

[@lobster5782]

@@andreasjansson5802 thank you very much, you're a legend!

[@mtm7031]

How to non-breaking word in affinity publisher?